I should have known the holiday was going to be character-building when I put the postcode into my sat nav and it tried to send me up a farmer's private track. Three-point turn on a slope, handbrake practically weeping, and my other half saying "maybe just ask someone" in that tone that means "I told you so" but dressed up as helpful advice.

We were headed for a place called Rennweg am Katschberg in Carinthia, Austria. I'd booked what the website called a "comfortable holiday home" and what I now suspect was code for "you will learn things about yourself." The journey from Klagenfurt Airport had been gorgeous, all pine forests and mountains that looked like they'd been painted by someone who really understood green. Then we hit the winding roads proper, and I discovered my stomach does not enjoy Austrian switchbacks after an airport pretzel.

The mishap, though. The proper one. We'd stopped at a supermarket in Spittal an der Drau to stock up, because I had visions of cooking alpine feasts. Loaded the boot with cheese, bread, some mysterious sausage I couldn't pronounce, and two bottles of something local and red. Got back in the car feeling smug and organised. Drove the final stretch up to Katschberg, found the house, unloaded everything onto the doorstep while fumbling for the key box code. Popped the boot to get the last bag. Empty. I'd left the entire shopping haul in the trolley at the car park. Every single item. The cheese, the bread, the unpronounceable sausage, the wine. All sitting in a Lidl trolley probably being wheeled back by a very efficient Austrian employee.

My other half looked at me. I looked at the empty boot. The mountains looked at both of us, utterly indifferent.

The house itself, though, that first impression when we finally got through the door, was almost enough to make me forget the Great Cheese Disaster. It had that proper alpine thing going on, lots of wood everywhere, beams that looked like they'd seen a few centuries. The living room had a fireplace I immediately decided I was qualified to use despite never successfully lighting one in my life. Big windows looking out at slopes that still had patches of snow even though it was supposedly spring. I stood there with my empty hands, no cheese to my name, and felt that particular mix of foolishness and relief that comes from arriving somewhere that might actually be worth the chaos.

The kitchen was better equipped than my one at home, which felt almost mocking given my current lack of ingredients. I opened cupboards out of habit, found fondue sets and proper coffee makers and things for raclette that I couldn't identify. The bedrooms were up a staircase so steep it was basically a ladder with delusions of grandeur. I hit my head within four minutes. My other half didn't laugh, which I appreciated, though I saw her shoulders go suspiciously still.

That evening, after a mercy dash to the local Spar where I bought significantly less ambitious provisions, we sat on the balcony with supermarket beer and watched the light change on the mountains. The air up there has a quality to it, thin and clean and somehow making everything feel more significant than it probably is. I said something pretentious about perspective. My other half reminded me I'd left wine in a Lidl trolley. We both laughed, and I decided that first impressions, even messy ones, especially messy ones, sometimes turn out to be the ones you remember properly.